Saundra

What to do? What to do? I had a tough time deciding on a rotation plan for May 2012. I decided to do the following: Sunday - Lisa Rinna Dance Body Beautiful workouts. I have had these forever. I feel that I need to do them. Monday - Kettlebell Kickboxing. I just recently got these. I am not a big fan of Kettlebells but love Kickboxing. So I will see how these go. Tuesday - My favorite Core Rhythm workouts. Wednesday - FIRM Cardio Sculpt workouts Thursday - Step and some dance Friday - KCM circuit and More FIRM Cardio Sculpt Saturday - Rest

So Let's Recap! There are 9 Ministry of Sound Pump It Up! fitness DVDs. The Ultimate Dance Workouts they are called.  As far as I can tell, they produced one workout a year starting in 2004. All of the workouts feature music from the original artist and I am guessing they are all artist assigned to or affiliated with the Ministry of Sound record labeled. I bought about 1/2 of the workouts from Amazon. The other workouts I had to get directly from Ministry of Sound. I ordered from their website and the workouts were shipped from England. The workout (in the order of release) are : Pump It Up! (2004) Deanne Berry PIU! BeachBody(2005) Fiona Fagan PIU! High Energy (2006) Fiona Fagan PIU! Burn It Lose It (2007) Deanne Berry PIU! Dancemix (2008) Gareth Walker PIU! Aeroburn (2009) Gareth Walker PIU! 2010 (Powermix) (2010) Dominique Tipper PIU! Bodyburn (2011) Gareth Walker PIU! Move It Lose It  (2012) Jay Ravell Overall  I really like the series a lot but the...

Well, I wasn't suppose to do this workout until Monday but it is the last workout in the series, so I decided to sneak it in. Tooooooo many step touches is by biggest critique in Pump It Up! Move It Lose It .  And really my only other criticism is that the presenter (lead) Jay Revell seemed unsure at times which is strange because he choreograph the routines as well.  I think he may have just lost his focus, but it distracted me. The music is by Ministry of Sound and it is great great great.  The set looked like dungeon, as if someone took their basement and tried to make it a dance club. So the workout: The format is similar to other Pump It Up! workouts and I like this format the best because you can essentially create your own workout from the different sections.  However, the create your workout doesn't give you the option of opting out of the warm up and stretch.  These are selected for you and you can't deselect them. The sections you can select ...

Another winner from Ministry of Sound Pump It Up! workout series. Pump It Up! Body Burn brings back Gareth Walker as the lead. In addition to Gareth, there are four cast members. Along with the warm up and stretch, there are five sections in which you can choose from. If you choose all five sections the workout is 90 minutes long. The sections are : Tone Shake It Move It Pop It Lock It Burn It Lose It Legs, Bums, and Tums I really like the create your own workout option and I am glad Ministry of Sound brought that option back in this workout. I chose to do the three dance aerobic sections. My workout ended up being 65 minutes. Both the warm up and stretch are about 10 minutes each. So the sections : Shake It Move It - Gareth delivers a funky club dance but it is doable. I had a lot of fun with this one. Pop It Lock It - This is street dance. This was the most challenging, a lot of staccato moves. There is definitely a learning curve with this dance. Burn It Lose It - This is high...

Pump It Up! Powermix is led by Dominique Tipper. The DVD menus allows you to choose the Powermix 1 workout or the Powermix 2 work. Powermix 1 is labeled as Beginner/Intermediate and Powermix 2 is labeled as Advanced. Each Powermix workouts comes with a warm up, tone section, and abs/stretch section. Whether you choose Powermix 1 or 2, the workout clocks in at 63 minutes. If you do all the sections of the workout, you are looking at an 85 minute workout. This DVD does not allow you to create your own routine as some of the other PIU! workouts. That was a bummer. The DVD does have a skip to section workout in which you can choose: Warm up - ~10 min Tone - ~ 12 min Powermix 1 - ~21 min Powermix 2 - ~ 21 min Abs & Stretch - ~ 19 min Choosing the sections from this area is the only way you can do the two Powermix sections back to back. Both Powermix 1 and 2 include a mini (about 3 minutes) cool down and stretch. When I did the workout, I did the Warm Up and the two Powermix Secti...

Pump it Up! Aeroburn clocks in at just over 62 minutes for the main workout. There is also a bonus Classic DanceMix section that is about 12 minutes in length. The Create A Routine option allows you to select the DanceMix section and any of the sections of the main workout. The main workout sections are: Warm It Up Tone It Up Aeroburn 1 Aeroburn 2 Cool It Off Stretch it Out I used the Create A Routine option and I chose the following segments: Warm It Up, Aeroburn 1, Aeroburn 2, Dancemix Classics, Stretch It Out. I did preview the Tone It Up and Cool It Off sections. The Tone It Up sections contains standing toning moves that work the legs and obliques. The Cool It Off section contains floor ab and plank work. Gareth Walker and Stephanie FitzPatrick lead the workout. Really the workout is lead by Gareth with Stephanie providing commentary and tips throughout the workout. Besides Gareth and Stephanie, there are three other cast members. I thought the workout really took sometime...

Oh my new favorite workout of 2012. I really really like this workout. Pump It Up Dancemix stars Gareth Walker as the lead. Gareth is a dancer choreographer for many Ministry of Sound workout videos. I will start first by talking about the DVD. The main menu looks like this: Introduction/Tips and Techniques Play Full Workout Skip to section Create Routine Extras Options Extras has interviews with the cast members including Gareth, Ministry of Sound Videos, Trailers, Behind the Scenes and Mobile Downloads. Options allows you to play the workout with or without commentary. It also allows you to play only the music. Skip to Section breaks down as: Warm It up - ~ 8 min Tone It Up - ~ 11 min Dancemix 1 - ~ 15 min Dancemix 2 - ~ 15 min Dancemix 3 - ~ 15 min Cool It Off - ~ 11 min So the workout. Love love the music. The energy was absolutely fantastic and Gareth, he was fun. Gareth teaches the workout in a layered approach. He first starts by showing you the move. He will do the move...

Another winner from the Ministry of Sound Pump It Up! workout series. While the first two Pump It Up! (PIU!) workouts I did, did not live up to my expectations (not bad, just okay) the last two PIU! workouts have been pretty good. Pump It Up! Burn It Lose It has a kickboxing flair to it and combine that with the dance element and the awesome music, you have a great workout. This workout is led by Deanne Berry and if you do the whole workout, it is about 75 minutes. The selectable sections are: Warm up Aeroburn BPM Beatbox Below the Belt Knockout. Aeroburn is your athletic aerobic section. BPM is your dance section. Beatbox is your kickboxing inspired section. Below the Belt is the toning section and Knockout is the cool down. I did not do the Below the Belt section. The dance section in this workout is less complex than the dance section in Hi-Energy, but the moves are still fun. This is probably my favorite part of the workout followed by Beatbox. Deanne did a much better job wit...

Pump It Up Hi Energy is just over 60 minute long and it features Fiona Fagan as the lead. The sections of the workout are : Warm It Up Burn It Up Dance It Up Tone It Up Cool It Down While I think Fiona did a much better job cuing Hi Energy, than she did with Beach Body, she still could use some improvement in this area. I say that because even the cast members were not always with her, or only half the crew would be with her. Fiona does use the technique where she will have you hold the current move, while she shows you what is coming next. And then you join her on the next iteration of the move. And that was fine. I didn't mind her cuing the workout like this at all. But other than the cuing. I really like this workout. Once again, the music is by Ministry of Sound and the soundtrack has lots of energy. In this workout, unlike the previous two Pump It Up workouts I have done thus far, the moves kept up with or match the music. I also didn't feel the workout overly repet...

Pump It Up! Beach Body - The Ultimate Summer Workout is a 56 minute workout and stars Fiona Fagan as the lead. The workout chapters are: sunrise - warm up section - 5 minute pump it up - hi-energy dance section - 30 minute get buff - bums, tums, and thighs - 15 minute sunset - cool down section. - 5 minute The workout is set on a beach in Miami and once again features the music of Ministry of Sound. The workout incorporates easy-to-do dance and aerobic moves. I did not find any of the moves too complicated. I did find a couple of the moves a bit repetitive. We did so many chest press/squeezes. At once point, I was like "Surely there are other arms moves we can do". I found the Pump It Up section of the workout to be a bit up and down in terms of energy and intensity. In between the different cardio sets or even a cardio move, Fiona stretch a lot. This is where I felt the energy and intensity go down. I did like most of the mini routines in this section. Get Buff Sec...

Pump It Up! The Ultimate Dance Workout features Deanne Berry as the lead. It is approximately 75 minutes in length and the DVD contains the following workout chapters: Heat - Warm Up Section Dance It Out - Dance Section 1 Pump It Up - High Energy Dance Section 2 Bums & Tums - Toning Section Chill - Cool Down Section I did all but the Bums & Tums section. Absolutely hands down, the workout features some of the best music I have heard in a workout video. That could be because the Pump It Up! workout series is back by Ministry of Sound, a British Record Label. The music is definitely the best part of the workout. Now the workout itself . Deanne does not mirror cue. Which with this workout, even though it is "dance-based", the lack of mirror cuing wasn't a big deal. That is because you are really not doing dance combinations. Essentially you do a series of moves (side lunges, forward lunges, hip swirls, rockouts, pelvis thrust, knees pulls, jacks, salsa and cha ...